Consultants like to say that AI will never replace them. One company’s latest move suggests that may not be entirely true.
West Monroe, a mid-sized global advisory firm, has launched six AI agents that generate strategy-style reports for free.
The six agents are available to the public through a website called WestMonroe.ai that launched on Monday and cover business model risk, competitive strategy, talent strategy, AI maturity, AI use case prioritization, and AI policy.
The aim is to enable business leaders to test ideas, investments and strategies before moving into deeper planning and execution, while demonstrating how much artificial intelligence is changing the consulting industry.
For example, midsize retailers can use the platform to understand which AI use cases are most relevant to their business. Private equity firms can also use the platform to assess disruption risks and opportunities across their portfolio companies.
Users enter their company name or URL and receive a 5- to 10-page report with an external perspective on use cases, disruptions, business differentiation, or policies that may impact their company.
Brett Greenstein, West Monroe’s chief AI officer and former PwC AI partner, said the platform provides more customized answers than a generic answer from ChatGPT or another AI tool.
These agents are built on West Monroe’s industry knowledge and experience working with thousands of clients, which “generally means you’ll get a much better answer than if you were to do it yourself,” he said.
“Democratization of insight”
Depending on the company and scope, Greenstein said West Monroe agents are producing the kind of early-stage strategic analysis that would once have cost clients hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.
Now, the marginal cost of producing the first layer of insight is approaching zero, he said.
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense to lock them up behind some sort of who’s who list or fees,” Greenstein told Business Insider. “We need to get this information out to people so they can take better action.”
The platform will act as a “democratization of insight,” he said.
The idea for free agency came from West Monroe’s internal experiments with AI coding tools like Claude Code and Codex. This makes it easy for non-engineers within the company to build working prototypes for clients.
As consulting work increasingly moves toward implementation and transformation, and as the early exploration stages become easier, West Monroe “realized that selling these things wasn’t really what it was about,” Greenstein said.
“It’s about helping them see the path and helping them navigate that path,” he says.
Brett Greenstein is West Monroe’s Chief AI Officer. west monroe
That doesn’t mean West Monroe plans to stop doing strategic work. This free agent service is a “phase zero” version of consulting and a way to help companies find the right areas of focus.
Greenstein said the paid work begins when the analysis becomes deeper and more specific to the customer’s data, operating model, workflows, pain points and implementation needs before action is taken.
But he recognizes that offering free AI consulting could irritate some of West Monroe’s competitors.
“I think this should upset people, but at the same time, we should already know this is coming.”
disruption to the industry
Across industries, consulting firms are racing to incorporate generative and agentic AI into their workflows, advising clients on how to implement the technology.
This change is challenging long-held pricing and talent models. There are also concerns about job losses, particularly at the lower levels of professional services, where many of the menial tasks have traditionally been performed by employees, but can now be supported by automation.
Greenstein said entry-level hiring hasn’t declined at West Monroe, and despite the new free consulting service, the AI chief doesn’t believe technology is going to replace consultants.
“Ultimately, our judgment, our critical thinking, our experiences are unique to us, for a very long time, if not forever,” Greenstein said, adding that relationships are paramount.
He said customers trust consultants on a personal level, and while AI may develop very strong judgment, it cannot be held accountable in the same way as a human.
Every step of the consulting lifecycle is being aided by AI, requiring consultants to start focusing less on the mechanics of their work and more on the outcomes they produce for their clients, Greenstein said.
The future of consulting, he said, is “working with clients to the best of our ability” to make them better.